Events Attended: Titanic Ball

Saturday evening was the grand ball (and I'll warn you now, I have nothing to say about the Sunday events - I heard they were lovely, but I had to go home and do schoolwork!). It was all very grand, with a nice dinner and some great music. A lot of people did not make it to the end, but they were missing out. I'm going to let the pictures speak for themselves, now.

This picture does totally insufficient justice to Mother's new dress. It is made of the most AMAZING fabric, embroidered all over in dramatic metallic purple peacock feathers, and embellished with glittering seed beads everywhere. It is really exquisite, but the camera loses all the drama of the light playing across the beads and threads. Tragic.

Julia is a rat fink and fell asleep (because she'd barely gotten any sleep in the past 48 hours and had been working really hard, blah blah blah), so I got exactly no good pictures of the new dress I threw together for her. So unfair. On the other hand, I do adore this picture. Tiara and bunny ears? Oh yes! Hahaha.

Events Attended: Titanic Tea

On Saturday morning, there was a early morning dance workshop. The sad part was that it was so early I was tired (if you close up an event and get home at 2 in the morning, then have to drive an hour to an event the next day that starts at 9, how miserable are you going to be?). But I pushed through and tried to be high-energy anyway! I can think of nothing more miserable than being in a dance class where the teacher is sucking the energy out of the room, instead of adding to it (and I have been in such a class, oh yes). We had a tough mix of skill levels, with about half the people having never done any ragtime dance at all and the other half being fairly expert! So we compromised and taught some relatively simple but rarely done ragtime variations. It warmed my little heart to see people trying them out at the ball that night! Now, after all that I have no pictures of the dance workshop. Boo! But I do have pictures of the tea that afternoon at the Hawthorne Hotel. It was really lovely, and I had the best time talking to really nice people. Plus, I got to show off a new tea dress!

I don't do group photos if I can avoid it, but everyone else looks so nice!

After tea we did a little story telling. I love Saki!

The room was lovely. It is a shame the carpet stops us from dancing!

A pretty new dress for Julia!

With a pretty sash! And a lovely hairstyle too.

The Pugliese Girls, in matching ragtime tea dresses. They are all basically based of a lovely original Mother owns. It is so simple and yet really pretty.

Posing in a window. I love windows.

Ruffles!

The tie is a vintage Harvard tie, so Adrian said he was Widener! Which was funny except that Widener died on the Titanic (which is why his mother donated tons of money to build Widener library, which is the reason we know him at all).

Events Attended: Titanic Steerage Ball

The grand Titanic weekend, sponsored by the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers, opened on Friday night with a steerage ball. What this meant was a little ambiguous, so we got a wonderful array of outfits. It was a cheerful, slightly casual night. And of course, the music (with members of our own wonderful Ad Hoc Quadrille Band backing up Ian Whitcomb, who we brought out from California!) was great.

I personally wore an old thrown-together ballgown. But I added a fun choker to make it more interesting! Does it say Mary Crawley to you?

Also, I have a lovely looking family, don't you think?

Titanic, Songe d'Automne

This weekend was a Titanic vintage dance week of epic proportions. Unfortunately, it has left me playing catch-up on schoolwork, so I haven't written you any great posts with pictures yet. Instead, I will leave you with the haunting song "Songe d'Automne," one song reported to be the final played by the band as the ship sank. Last night at the ball, our band played this as a final waltz. Although many people did not stay though the end of the evening, it was really quite something for those of us who stayed.